Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance

Reviewed by Matthew CauseySchool of Drama, Film and MusicTrinity College, DublinIreland

Chris Salter's Entangled:
Technology and the Transformation of Performance from MIT
Press, 2010, is an impressive and useful history of ‘how
technologies, from the mechanical to the computational, have
radically transformed artistic performance practices during the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries on and off the
stage.’ A remarkable history is told in this book, and
Salter's telling is intelligent and clear. The collation of so
many artists, practices and technologies is impressive, and this
book will serve as a valuable resource for scholars and
artists.

Salter brings a sophistication and clarity to his research,
which foregrounds the work of the artists rather than the many
theoretical complications that have accompanied the history of
performance and technology. Covering much of the same territory
as Steve Dixon's Digital Performance: A History of New Media in
Theater, Dance, Performance Art and Installation (MIT Press,
2007), the first two chapters of Entangled are organized
historically, as a chronological narrative from 1896 to the
contemporary. The remainder of the book is usefully structured
along technological and performative modalities (space,
projections, sound, bodies, machines, and interactivity). The
history begins, as is now the manner for the rehearsal of the
history of performance and technology (i.e., Dixon, Goldberg,
Giesekam), with Wagner's notions of gesamptkunstwerk as an
origin point and the usual suspects of Appia, Italian and
Russian Futurism, Constructivism, etc., following. Each
movement, artist, practice or technology is neatly positioned
and described. The work includes important references to Svoboda
in the post-war period, up to and including the contemporary
beginnings of new media performance with the earliest
experiments with the Sony Portapak system.

Salter's compilation of brief overviews of the artists will
be useful for students and researchers seeking to position the
trajectory of technological innovations incorporated in theatre
and performance. At times, the brevity of the descriptions of
each artist override a reflective analysis of the work, and the
reliance on precise encyclopedic descriptions does mean that the
work is not always clearly organized. Nevertheless, the multiple
narratives are exhaustive and complete, as Salter has claimed a
wide variety of performance genres into his argument. Throughout
the book, little known and overlooked works are recovered and
historicized effectively. The sheer volume of works of
performance and technology presented is impressive and
represents a remarkable diligence in historicizing the
field.

The chronological sections are followed in Chapter 3 with a
look at ‘ephemeral, transformative, and kinetic’ architecture as
a performative gesture. The manners of the performativities of
architecture are an interesting area of research, and Salter may
make his most original contributions in this
section. Considering the work of the Futurist architects and
contemporary designers such as Diller + Scofidio, and many
others, the discussion concerns the ‘event of architecture,’ its
scene rather than screen, its space and happenings, and the
machine of architecture. Mediatechtures and their potential for
providing smart surfaces and substances that activate digital
displays are discussed.

Salter makes us aware that the urban landscape of
technologized cultures is moving toward a dynamism of electronic
shape-shifting capacities and new models of dwelling and
habitation. Modeling architecture on the notions of event and
performance gives us a way of reconfiguring our relationship
with architecture that draws us toward an electronic
theatricality that ‘takes place’ in a building and not simply
screened upon a surface.

Televisual and filmic projected imagery in live performance
is now a ubiquitous component of commercial and experimental
theatre and performance practice, and in Chapter 4, Salter
narrates the history of this form and outlines the high
points. Again, the history of screened and projection
technologies in performance is well-trodden and Salter rehearses
the innovations of Paik, Vostell, The Kitchen and the Wooster
Group, while drawing out some fascinating and overlooked
productions such as Carl Weber's production of Handke's Kaspar
at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (1973). It is a pleasure to see
the lesser-known work of companies and artists such as Squat and
Ping Chong brought to bear on this history. It is this attention
to detail that makes Salter's work valuable.

The book is highly selective regarding any theoretical models
that have been applied to this field of study, however, and
there is little in the way of an acknowledgment of the
concurrent theoretical discussions that took place in the fields
of aesthetics, digital culture and theatre and performance
studies. David Savran on the Wooster Group, Michael Kirby or
Günter Berghaus on Futurist Performance, Sue-Ellen Case on
gender politics in technology, Philip Auslander on questions of
liveness, Steve Dixon or Johannes Birringer on digital
performance and dance receive little in the way of
attribution. In Salter's defense, there would hardly have been
room for any further material to be introduced into this lengthy
study, which adds up to 460 pages. The focus of the book is the
technological innovations and reconfigurations of performance
practice considered through a cultural materialist reading.

Essentially, this a book interested in the practices and
strategies of the artists and less with a critical
perspective. It is a book by a scholar working in practice-based
research, and his concern with practice over theory is
evident. Salter's own work in technologized performance is
presented as part of the book, and the reader can consider his
work within the larger history rehearsed. I don't mean to
suggest that the work is following the current vogue of
anti-intellectualism in academia, nor is it anti-theoretical. In
fact, the sheer density of the text is testament to its
intelligence and complex retellings. Nonetheless, it is
important to acknowledge the bias of the text toward practice to
an extreme exclusion of the wider field of digital and techno
culture and performance studies. So, where a theoretical
question from Avital Ronell on a Heideggerian question
concerning technology may be missing, there will be an inclusion
of the lesser-known but vital work of Matt Heckert of Survival
Research Labs. Where there may be no substantial reflection on
Benjamin's ‘Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’
there will be multiple examples of rarely discussed performance
works.

For me, when Salter's arguments work best is when he reads
the performance practices as if they were theory and follows
their response to the technoculture they inhabit. Even with this
reservation, I do not underestimate the high quality of the
research, the exhaustive detail of the documentation and the
depth of the reflection on the topics. It is a smart and
important work.

The remainder of the book contains chapters on sound
experimentation; bodies in technological spaces; transformed,
extended and altered machines/mechanicals; and finally,
interactivity. The rhetorical strategy remains the same, with a
plethora of examples compiled and organized against a
materialist concern for what happens on the stage, the gallery
space, or the screen. Chris Salter's Entangled is an important
and valuable contribution to the fields of theatre and
performance and digital culture. I have already made use of the
text several times in my seminar on the ‘History and Theory of
Digital Art.’ Thus, the usability factor is very high,
indeed.